GALENA — Tammy Allen’s front porch overlooks the trash-scattered hills of the Galena Landfill, built on an area once called Hell’s Half Acre.
In the past three years, Allen’s house randomly began to fill with a mix of odors that she believes cause her headaches, nausea and vomiting.
“The smells come and go, and you never know when they’re going to hit,” Allen said. “There’s one that smells like a dirty garage … and there’s one that smells like stale cigarette smoke.”
Although she has lived near the site for decades, Allen said problems with smoldering landfill fires and bad smells increased in the past two or three years.
Allen is part of a group of Galena residents, Neighbors for Clean Air, fighting for additional oversight and remediation at the landfill, which is operated by Jordan Disposal LLC.
Ashley Wells, who lives near the landfill, founded the group as people throughout the small southeast Kansas town shared concerns and frustrations about health issues and the noxious odors that sometimes flood the downtown area.
Two Galena residents filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court asking for a class action lawsuit to be approved. Multiple people filed environmental complaints to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Wells said, as well as to city and county officials and also to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The landfill is blocks from Galena’s downtown area, with residences and even a child care facility surrounding it. The southeast Kansas town of about 2,700 people is a stop on Route 66, and as the iconic highway’s 100-year anniversary approaches, the landfill is next to a sightseeing area busy with tourists taking pictures.
Wells said her family didn’t initially smell bad odors, but that changed about three years ago.
“What we’ve been smelling is that hydrogen sulfide, what they have now found to be tested and confirmed that it is hydrogen sulfide, and it’s a very strong rotten egg smell,” she said. “Each year, it just keeps getting worse. This past winter, 2025, it was very bad. One week, just an example, there was four nights out of seven in a row that I had my house smelling like hydrogen sulfide. Very difficult to sleep when you’re sitting there smelling that. It makes you sick to your stomach. It gives you a headache.”
A representative of the family-owned Jordan Disposal said he couldn’t comment about the situation because there is pending litigation.
A Superfund site
KDHE certified the landfill in 1997, agency records show. KDHE and the EPA approved expansion in 2011 so the landfill could serve as a dumping ground for Joplin, Missouri, debris after an EF-5 tornado swept through the city and killed nearly 160 people.
Jordan Disposal didn’t take over landfill operations until 2019, according to the company’s court filings.
The landfill is certified as a construction and demolition landfill, which limits the items that can be dumped to what the name implies, only solid waste resulting from the construction, remodeling, repair and demolition of structures, roads, sidewalks and utilities, and things like untreated wood and sawdust. Such landfills aren’t required to have a liner, according to KDHE.
Because the Galena Landfill didn’t have a liner, approval to put tornado debris there required two levels of waste screening, the first conducted by the EPA in Joplin and the second conducted at the landfill before the debris was dumped, KDHE’s website said.
However, residents contend it would have been impossible to screen the debris effectively, as the Columbia Missourian reported in 2012 that there were 350 trucks coming in daily, dumping 12 tons of trash per minute.
“In the August (2025) fire, they did have a propane tank blow up out there that is not supposed to be in a (construction and demolition landfill), so that tells us things do get missed,” Wells said. “You know it happens.”
Wells said she doesn’t think anything “malicious” was done but believes the emergency situation made it easier to miss items that shouldn’t be in an unlined landfill.
Local residents worry about the history of the area and other contaminants known to be there. The area was once a Superfund site, with 599 mine hazards found in and around Galena, many on Hell’s Half Acre, according to the Kansas Geological Survey.
From the 1800s through 1970, a 115-mile area was mined for lead and zinc, leaving significant contamination, according to the EPA.
“The hundred years of mining also left the region with serious environmental problems,” the Kansas Geological Survey said. “When the mines closed, the pumping stopped, and the abandoned tunnels filled with water. The water in these tunnels became contaminated by iron sulfide (from pyrite and marcasite) and other metallic sulfides, which remained in the mine walls or were left behind by the miners. In addition to becoming very acidic, the water contained dissolved metals, some of which are very toxic. This water, in turn, contaminated local ground water, springs, and surface water.”
The EPA said millions of cubic yards of mine tailings, which are ground rock and wastewater left from the mining process, were brought to the surface and left in piles covering more than 4,000 acres.
“These mine tailings contaminated soil, surface water, sediment, and groundwater with lead, zinc and cadmium, the primary contaminants of concern,” EPA documentation said.
Remediation was done throughout the area, beginning in the 1980s and continuing today, the Kansas Geological Survey said. The EPA divided the county into six subsites that include Galena, Baxter Springs and Treece.
Wells said the EPA recently tested the soil in her yard and found enough lead to require remediation. Anyone in the county can have the test done, and the EPA removes the top few inches of soil and replaces it with clean soil, she said.
Wells said residents are left with many questions about the mine shafts and how that affects the landfill.
“We’d like to see a very thorough investigation,” she said. “What could be going down into the shafts? What’s going on underneath the surface? From what I understand, they have only done surface temperatures for the hot spots. We’d like to see ground penetrating radar. How big is this fire? We have asked multiple times at council meetings, and we cannot get an answer.”
